Virtual hang-out with workadventu.re some experiences

GOSH Skill Share Help Offered
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Continuing the discussion from GOSH Newsletter, Open Hours & Community Coordinator Weekly Hours:

Starting a dedicated topic here on the use of workadventu.re.
I personally had a lot of fun and great experiences designing a map and using it first time during December in the times leading up to the grand rC3, remote chaos experience, the virtual version of the chaos communication congress. For witch many hackerspaces designed their own worlds which was uber-connected and hosted approximately 20k people… YES! it was a chaos.

The map we were drawing for our new space in Zürich, Bitwäscherei, is accessible by the link I shared earlier.
http://island.hackteria.org/

I people are interested to learn more. this how to is quite a good start:
https://howto.rc3.world/maps.html

Generally we also used our maps for small hang-outs. our weekly openlab on tuesday, while some people were in the space, others joined from their home-labs. what we learned is that it’s kinda important to announce some kinda programm and schedule, WHEN, we are there, to make sure a minimal critical number is around, so the interaction is relevant. (a meeting call of 3-4 people is easier to do otherwise). we also used it for our x.mas party, where we invited our community to be part of an online exhibition, which is still visible in the map.

a continous development, new stuff around, and accessible documentation of earlier activities in the virtual map is kinda important and makes it more “alive”, but it needs a lot of back-end work by the designers.

with those good experiences i went on to use workadventu.re for a hybrdid classroom activities. A 1 week project week for biomed / enginnering students in the fablab Luzern. And I have to say, it worked fantastic and we got super feedback from the students.
https://www.hackteria.org/discourse/education/hybrid-project-class-on-diy-medtech-fablab-lu/

of course with students it’s even easier to “motivate” them to use the tool for a whole period of time… cos we can just say they have to :slight_smile:

To give you some other ideas, who a map can look like. check this one:
https://wa.tabascoeye.de/

I am happy to share more experiences, and maybe we can find a group and time to have a little online crash course and design our own map for the gosh community. in the meantime, feel free to use the island.hackteria.org

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I love this, we want to do it in the GOAT community and OpenTEAM as well.

Is Work adventure open source? I don’t see it on their web page. Are they using calla.chat or some other platform? I’d really like to invest in something open source if at all possible, but work adventure seems to be ideal and web based so super easy.

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Looking at the github, and all those peeps that contributed, it seems pretty much open source.
but there is no clear license available it seems.

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It appears that they have separate licenses for the different components off the app, all stored in subdirectories.

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I agree with @dusjagr that it would be an awesome idea to have a crash course and design a map together. I made a new group titled “GOSH virtual-workspace” - those who are interested in designing a map can join this, and we can chat here about scheduling a time to meet, etc. :slight_smile:

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Hei everybody,

Please join our discussion group if your are interested in learning more about how to design your own workadventure map! GOSH Community Forum

we have tried to find a date for a group call / workshop, where I will go step-by-step through the process of starting your own “world” from scratch. But now first another shout out here!!

You need a github account, best to look at this instructions already and install the software Tiled.
https://howto.rc3.world/maps.html

I also recently advised our friend @greg Gage from Backyard Brains and they made this fantastic “summer school” virtual space and hosting the server side themselves.
https://office.backyardbrains.com/

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I think it’s best if more people join our upcomg workshop. I’ll post a poll for a date later…
Although many of us are hopefully in the happy situation of having more social contacts due to lifted restrictions, on the other hand workadventure is really a fantastic tool to have informal global hang-out in our community, which will never be coming together all at once anyway.

Also we had good experiences in merging both the virtual hang-out from workadventure with local activities. a few cameras in the room, big screens to see the virtual world, and public laptops for the local audience to interact with the online participants.

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It definitely isn’t Open Source. They are using a modified version of the AGPL that prevents sale. This is a terrible idea in my opinion. In part because it makes it incompatible with all existing AGPL code and also because it is super confusing to use the familiar AGPL name for something that isn’t open source. I don’t know if the FSF actually allows this. Wouldn’t the license text itself by subject to copyright with derivatives being disallowed? Not sure. Unfortunately AGPL is not trademarked and I’m not sure it could be given that no products are being sold but that’s how Linux protects itself from things that are not Linux being called Linux.

I was so excited about this project too since I’d heard it was open source but I’m definitely not interested in supporting the proliferation of non open source licenses, especially not ones that make themselves look like open source licenses.

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Edited - Preciously I could not find the changes

Unfortunately, I have to agree with @Juul, this is not open source. The licenses are AGPL plus a “Commons Clause” that is similar in my mind to the “non commercial” of the creative commons license. Yet it is more confusing, and encourages an awful misleading trend of adding terms to licenses making the license incompatible with other code of the same license.

There are numerous opinions on this for example:

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Interesting. thx for looking deeper into their weird license use.
I am a bit surprised, as many people in the CCC network has been praising the tool for the last congress.
I asked in another chat fosued on workadventure in their network. mostly in german.

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I’m afraid I also agree with @julianstirling and @juul and was saddened to discover this about workadventure. Thank you for linking to the various opinions on the matter.

While I don’t assume anything malicious about the motivations behind the Commons Clause, this addition not only does not meet the definition of open source software and free software, it also dilutes the meaning of those terms, muddies the water, adds confusion, and continues the misleading trend that @julianstirling referred to. Most importantly, licenses with the Commons Clause do not respect software freedom which concerns me the most.

A quick search showed that there are two issues discussing this in the workadventure repository: #523 (opened by our very own @mariob) and #678.

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Can we just fork it and remove those santa clauses?

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Unfortunately no, otherwise the clause is meaningless as anyone that wanted to sell would just remove the clause.

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While the licensing discussion is important it doesn’t actually stop us from using this for some GOSH online hangouts. Unlike other similar solutions (gather.town, rambly.app) this at least allows us to self-host and we could even make improvements and fixes to the software should we need to. If I remember correctly the actual video chat part uses Jitsi which is fully open source (without Santa clauses).

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Well… what a great thread. We’ve been toying with things also in the GOAT community (@sudokita and @dornawcox ), workadventure seems great but yes the licensing issues not great.

That said - most of the effort is actually in creating the tilekit and stuff, which Greg Gage (or someone at BB) has done so nicely - so honestly if and when a more completely open source version appears it won’t be hard to switch.

Anyone care to share great places for tile sets that you’ve found. Searching produces many, but would love opinions about the coolest / best tile sets to build out your world!

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Yes, I am happy to do this internal little design intro on how to use workadventure and some experiences to design the maps. We can follow up some discussions from earlier… but i am mostly interested to just share some basic technical aspects of how to get your world running, some experiences designing it and using it for community or teaching activities.

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Let’s find a suitable date using this polling option from our nextcloud:
https://mega.hackteria.org/index.php/apps/polls/s/z3w3ucErH9KHlXAK

and to leave the forum for other stuff to discuss, let’s have detailed dicsussions in this group:
https://forum.openhardware.science/g/virtual-workspace

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Thanks! I just filled in the poll (really cool that Nextcloud does this, TIL!). That said, in case the earlier option (22 July) works better for most people I suggest we prioritise that. I’ll just try to catch up afterwards.

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I just responded to the Tuesday option and added a Friday option on July 30 as Thursday AMs just got booked for another GOSH meeting. Cool to use NextCloud’s polling tool! thanks for that.

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Ooooh I just noticed that, for some reason, I’m unable to amend my previous answers. FWIW, I can also attend at the last slot @lizbarry proposed i.e. on 30 July.

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Thx for the first responses to fnd a date for that workadventure intro / design skill share session.
Anyone else interested?
Let’s find a suitable date using this polling option from our nextcloud:
https://mega.hackteria.org/index.php/apps/polls/s/z3w3ucErH9KHlXAK

Seems like we couldn’t find a suitable date yet.

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So we had a small group hang-out today, briefly looking into some design experiences on making the virtual world more alive and interactive.
only 1 person joined. thx @ldehlwes

Sorry that i didnt announce this timeslot more clearly…
I guess it’s summer holiday time in various parts of the wolrd at the moment.
we can schedule another date using the same tool:
https://mega.hackteria.org/index.php/apps/polls/s/z3w3ucErH9KHlXAK

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